Using case studies from several Third World countries, this article argues that the concentration of women, particularly married women with young children, in the informal sector and the form their work takes are the result of the interaction of four factors; the changing requirements of the labour process in different branches of production at certain phases of economic reorganisation; differential labour absorption and the creation of an age‐specific female workforce; the ideological assumptions which determine the economic spaces allocated to women and the value placed on female labour power, the close inter‐relationship between the domestic role of women and their position as specific kinds of wage workers.